Blue Pill Blues

"Experience should teach us to be most on guard to protect liberty when the goverments' purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachments by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding."
--Justice Louis Brandeis

Two nice observations here by sociologist Robert Nisbet. The first is the proposition that the primary vehicle for driving increases in state power over the past century has been largely invisible. It is found thru the labyrinth of commissions, bureaus, oversight bodies largely charged with humanitarian directives (oxymoron?). Provides a Matrix-like effect that folks have trouble seeing thru.

The second is that strong positive relationship between the 'ethic' of equality and centralization of power. Nisbet cites a number of writers who 'saw' this clearly by the 18th century. Tocqueville, for example:

"The foremost, or indeed the sole, condition required in order to succeed in centralizing the supreme power in a democratic community is to love equality or to get men to believe you love it. Thus, the science of despotism, which was once so complex, has been simplified and reduced, as it were, to a single principle."

btw, there are two primary definitions of equality. One is sameness under the law. No favorites or bias. The law has no 'interest.' This is the definition implied by Jefferson ('...all men are created equal'). All can pursue happiness under law that grants favor or that burdens some at the expense of others.

The other definition of equality is one of sameness of result. Leveling of income, for instance. This is the type of equality the Nisbet treats here. Under a democracy, a drive for equality of income consolidates State power in attempts to make it so.

Liberty is negatively correlated to such a progression.